I usually don’t post things as they are unfolding, preferring to wait until the facts are in. But this is just too ironic.
John Boehner has announced that he is resigning. There seem to be two explanations:
- Tea Party congressmen were threatening to remove him from the House speakership if he didn’t force a government shutdown by inserting language to defund Planned Parenthood into the upcoming budget bill. His resignation removed their only bargaining point. The director of the Bipartisan Policy Center says “He took a bullet for the country.”
- He announced his resignation right after an encounter with the Pope. He also cried during the Pope’s address to Congress.
Continuously updating information coming in on the WaPo’s live blog.
Regardless of the reason, my opinion of Boehner has gone way up by the way he handled this. Although I’ve never been a big fan of Boehner, I’ve often thought that he was more of a victim of the really bad situation in Congress. How can anyone keep the government working when any cooperation with the Democrats is treated as tantamount to treason?
2 Comments
I was initially elated by this news, and while I am still happy he is gone, I am quite worried at what might replace him…
I would feel a lot more sympathy for Boehner, if it weren’t for the fact that he never even attempted to work with Obama and he basically just got eaten by a monster of his own making.